Army of Shadows

by John Harris

  They found Frobinius leaning against a wrecked car near the single strand of barbed wire that bordered the road. He’d been wounded by a splinter from Brisson’s bomb but, as the Dréos approached, he lifted his pistol. The bullet bit the younger Dréo in the mouth and he reeled away, spitting blood and teeth until he collapsed. His father lifted his rifle and shot the German in the chest.

  Frobinius staggered back, putting out one hand to the wire to retain his balance, indifferent to the barbs that tore at his flesh. The pistol dropped from his fingers and he stared wildly at the old man who stopped in front of him, not speaking, his face expressionless. Then Dréo lifted the rifle again and shot him once more in the chest. As Frobinius fell backwards, the wire caught him behind the legs, so that he toppled over to land on his back with his head in the mud, his black-booted feet held up by the sagging wire in an attitude of gross indignity.

  He wasn’t dead but was gasping with agony, the blood bubbling from his mouth, his eyes wild with the desperation of a cornered animal. Sergeant Dréo stood staring down at him, his eyes hard under the old steel helmet. It was almost as though the old man were allowing him time to absorb what was about to happen. Then he put the rifle muzzle to the writhing German’s face so that he could look straight down the barrel for the last second or two of life, and shot him between the eyes. The bullet punched in his nose and blew out the back of his head. As his blood and brains oozed into the muddy grass of the slope, the jackbooted feet gave a last convulsive kick and were still.

  12

  By 4.30 p.m. it was all over.

  More of the Frenchmen began to scramble down to the road as the resistance died, Dring and Ernouf still talking incessantly and handling their long rifles like experts. A young German, stumbling as he tried to drag out an ammunition box, stopped as a bullet shattered his arm. Another just behind him promptly dropped his weapon and waved a white handkerchief, his face terrified. Young Gaston Dring, his face like a choirboy’s, walked forward and with only a slight tensing of the muscles of his features, lifted a Sten he’d acquired and fired two copybook bursts. The bullets struck the wounded German in the chest and flung him aside. The other man staggered back, still clutching his handkerchief, fell over the ammunition box, and collapsed with his legs across it, moaning. A man in a blue smock from Bourg-la-Chattel, walked forward and, holding his rifle with one hand, leaned over to shoot him in the head, then turned to another man in a beret who appeared behind him and held out a cigarette for a light, as though he had merely paused in cutting a hedge.

  Neville, his face grimy with battle, was suddenly sickened. ‘Stop it,’ he yelled at Reinach. ‘It’s over! It’s finished! How many more lives do you want?’

  Reinach stared at him and began to shout so that the shooting died away. The road was littered with smashed vehicles, the bodies of men, immobilized guns, and four burning tanks whose ammunition was still exploding. Even the river bed had proved a death-trap, the swiftly-flowing water washing over the remains of horses, limbers, guns and human beings which had tried to find shelter there or had crashed from the road in the panic.

  Every staff car seemed to be filled with loot. There were glasses, typewriters, pistols and small arms by the hundred scattered among the wreckage along with cases of wine, tinned food and medical stores, leather goods, clothing and - oddly enough - corsets. Across the seat of one car, clutching five looted fur coats to her, was the body of a woman. Further down, surrounded by dead men, whose unweathered faces, uncalloused hands and spectacles proclaimed that they were clerks and orderlies, were two dead girls dressed in grey uniforms, women office workers who’d somehow been left behind and been caught up in the horror in the Fond St Amarin. They had once been pretty, and as they sprawled in the road they looked small and childish and somehow twice as pathetic. Neville stared at them with empty eyes, his stomach churning with nausea.

  Here and there stray shots still rang out as Miliciens or SS men were dragged out. For them there was no mercy. A last pocket of resistance in the bushes where they’d hidden was destroyed by the simple expedient of scattering petrol on the undergrowth on the windward side and setting fire to it; as the SS men appeared coughing and spluttering, they were mown down with Stens.

  One man, wearing the jacket of a grenadier, was standing with his hands in the air being questioned by Reinach in Polish and insisting in German that he was a Pole.

  Then why are you wearing SS trousers?’ Reinach demanded.

  ‘I am a Pole. I was born in Warsaw.’

  ‘When did you join the German army?’

  ‘I am a Pole. I was born in Warsaw.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day.’

  ‘I am a Pole born in Warsaw.’

  Reinach shook his head. ‘He’s an SS man,’ he said, and Hytier lifted his gun and pulled the trigger.

  Prowling among the dead, Gaston Dring brought a packet of papers and an army pay book to Urquhart. He seemed a little afraid of him.

  Urquhart scanned them. ‘Justus Witkus,’ he said. ‘Captain Afrika Korps. Holder of the East Medal for the Winter War. France, Greece, Africa, Italy and back to France. Poor bastard, I’ve probably exchanged shots with him before.’

  He opened the wallet. There was a picture of a young woman and a small child, both of them good-looking and smiling and a letter congratulating Witkus on winning the Knight’s Cross.

  Urquhart looked up. Dring was holding out a wrist watch and the enamelled medallion.

  ‘Keep it,’ Urquhart said. ‘It’s worth keeping. He must have been quite a soldier.’

  When the relieving troops arrived, coming over the ridge in a long khaki line, they said they were Spahis of the Free French First Division. They were good troops and well equipped and, though they looked tired after their headlong dash from the coast, they showed no sign of wear and tear apart from their dusty uniforms.

  Thanks to you,’ their colonel told Reinach, we’ve got around nine thousand Germans bottled up between Néry and St Seigneur because the Americans have just arrived at the other end of the valley. How many did you kill?’

  ‘Around a hundred and eighty,’ Reinach said bleakly. ‘That’s a fair exchange for the lives they took. There are a hell of a lot of wounded as well.’

  The colonel stared down the valley at the wreckage. Flies from all over the province seemed to have scented the spilled blood already and were swarming over the chaos, great fat creatures that pestered even the living. Now the shooting had stopped, in the sudden stillness they could hear the singing of birds.

  ‘You’ve done a good job,’ the colonel said. ‘La Patrie est reconnaissante.’

  Walking up the hill, gathering the various groups together, Urquhart was aware of an enormous lassitude. The whole valley stank of burning oil, scorched flesh and melting rubber and the men searching for wounded among the wreckage coughed and spluttered in the smoke. Those Germans who could walk were disarmed and sent stumbling down the slope towards Néry.

  At the roadside, Ernestine Bona and Marie-Claude were weeping together over a dying boy. Dr Mouillet had laid out the French dead in the meadow and had now moved down to the road to examine the bodies of others as they were brought down. There were thirty-nine altogether, including several youngsters who, excited by the battle, had rushed forward to be able to claim they’d shot a German and been caught themselves. There were also old Balmaceda, Sergeant Dréo’s son, Yvon Guélis, Théyras, and the black bulk of Father Pol, their bodies watched over by a group of men with stiff, saddened faces.

  ‘Dear God, what a mess,’ Neville said, staring at the dead priest.

  ‘He always said that there’d be a time when it would be worth dying,’ Urquhart said flatly. ‘I suppose he’d have considered this was it.’

  Someone produced a tricolour and tied it to a tree. It caught the breeze and fluttered in the smoke that drifted up from the road. Urquhart saw there were tears in Reinach’s eyes and, when a small group of boys and girls started to sing ‘La Marseillais
e’, none of the older men joined in so that it sounded thin and reedy in the afternoon air and finally died away.

  Bottles of wine began to change hands and there was a lot of excited chatter, but not among the older men. They were family men who’d learned the value of life and, for all their hatred of the Germans, they didn’t enjoy seeing the slaughter they’d wrought. It had been too easy. Neville’s plan had been too clever, and the springing of the trap so perfect there was not much satisfaction from their success.

  Reinach stood watching his men dragging dead Germans to the side of the road and laying them in rows. ‘This is how they left our young men,’ he said. ‘In neat rows by the roadside.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Why do I feel so little satisfaction, Urk’t,’

  Urquhart lifted his head. ‘Because these weren’t the ones who did it,’ he said.

  ‘There were SS men among them.’

  ‘Most of these were headquarters clerks.’

  ‘They didn’t fight like clerks.’

  Urquhart gestured. ‘And poor stupid bloody Klemens, locked in the cellar down there.’ He jerked a hand at the smoke filling the valley. They’ve killed the cattle and burned your homes. Was that what you wanted?’

  Someone handed him a bottle and he drank from it, aware of the rough wine grating against his throat. Neville still looked pale and shaken under the dirt as he passed it on to him.

  Almost everyone was down from the slopes now, moving between the abandoned vehicles, filthy and exhausted by the fury and passion of the fight. Looted bottles of brandy had been found and there was some laughter, high-pitched and edgy, compounded of shock, excitement and relief that it was all over.

  In Néry, it seemed as if half the German army was crammed among the burning houses. The French colonel, who was looking for war criminals and seemed eager to find some, insisted on Neville,. Urquhart, Reinach and a few others accompanying him. They rode in a German lorry behind a French tank. Other villagers began to follow them to find out what had happened to their homes.

  There were already Americans on the western slopes and apart from a few determined men still firing sporadically from hiding places, the Germans had thrown down their arms. American tanks were driving them into one of Gaudin’s fields, where they were being searched, and out at the other side in a long dusty column heading west to imprisonment. The French troops started doing the same thing on the eastern slopes, using the yard of the château for the interrogation. Colonel Klemens and General Dannhüber were among the first to appear.

  ‘Do we hold them as war criminals?’ the French colonel asked.

  Reinach shook his head. ‘Not for us.’

  As Tarnera passed, Reinach stopped him. ‘I’m sorry I had to hit you so hard,’ he said. ‘I have no personal feelings towards you.’

  His head bandaged, Tarnera lifted his eyes and managed a smile as he vanished.

  Moving through the village, their ears caught by the occasional bursts of firing as the last pockets of resistance were winkled out of barns and cottages, they stared at the burned and wrecked houses. The Free French had got a bucket chain working from Reinach’s big water tank. They had stopped the blaze inside the church, but the Gaudin farmhouse was in ruins. Only the fact that the Defourney house had been used as a dressing station had saved it.

  ‘They couldn’t burn Néry,’ Reinach said in a dry, proud voice. ‘It was too old and too well built.’

  De Frager appeared. He seemed suddenly to have grown up. There were no wild declamations and no histrionics. ‘My great-grandmother would have liked to have seen them in defeat,’ he said. ‘But they set fire to the house and she and Euphrasie and Joseph tried to fight it. She had a heart attack.’

  Looking for Marie-Claude, Neville found himself staring up the dusty drive of the farm that they’d used now for nearly five months. The bicycles lay in the yard, twisted and ruined as if a lorry had been driven over them. Beyond the stackyard, he could see the cattle dead in the field. Though the house seemed untouched, the wooden porch had been set on fire and had burned completely away so that there was a scorch mark across the whitewashed wall. The haystack lay in a heap of glowing ashes and the air was full of floating black flecks. Here and there piles of hay had been scattered by running feet.

  Madame Lamy had returned to the village ahead of them through the fields at the back of the house and was standing among the wreckage, weeping quietly. ‘There are wounded Germans on the beds,’ she said slowly. ‘And two of them dead in the vegetable patch waiting to be buried.’

  Abandoned weapons lay about the drive with scattered clothing and German equipment. Neville’s eyes were agonized. ‘Poor Marie-Claude,’ he said.

  Urquhart surveyed the wreckage not as a city dweller but as a countryman whose family had faced such disasters before.

  ‘We can get it going again,’ he said quietly. ‘Work’s all that’s needed.’ He sounded surprisingly like Reinach.

  More villagers were beginning to appear from the slopes in lorries and German cars and on foot. Lionel Dring arrived with his father, Brisson and Ernestine Bona. They were standing in the yard staring at the cows sprawled in the field beyond the stackyard gate, the pigs dead in the sties, the dead chickens with spread wings and scattered feathers, when a fusillade of shots sent them all diving for shelter.

  Crouching behind the thick wheels of the platform, Neville realized that Urquhart was not with him and, lifting his head, he saw him lying among the scattered hay, moving feebly, blood shining on his face in the sun in a vivid red splash. Then a dozen Free French soldiers, attracted by the shots, crashed into the yard, firing at the barn with everything they possessed. A German fell from the loft and thudded to the ground, his helmet clonking tinnily on the roof of the pigsties.

  In the silence, as they rose slowly to their feet, the French sergeant bent over Urquhart. A bullet had sliced across his cheek near the bone, cutting it open. Despite the blood it was only a slight wound and he was already sitting up.

  ‘Is he all right?’ Neville asked as he knelt down with Reinach and Ernestine.

  Ernestine nodded. ‘He’ll be with us a long time yet,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll bandage it,’ Reinach offered.

  Ernestine gave him a shove. ‘Never mind the bandage,’ she said. ‘Go and get her.’

  Reinach stared. ‘Who?’

  ‘Use your wits, you oaf! Who do you think?’

  As Reinach dashed off, Ernestine looked at Urquhart who was drawing his feet under him to rise. He looked dazed but not much hurt, and she pushed him back quickly. ‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘Have you no sense of drama?’

  Then a scout car stopped outside the gate with a squeal of brakes and Marie-Claude, her face twisted with apprehension, hurried down the drive, followed by Reinach. As she saw Urquhart, she ran towards him, crying his name. As she passed, Neville made to stop her, but she brushed him aside as if she didn’t even see him and, falling on her knees beside Urquhart, she pulled him to her, his head cradled against her breast. ‘Urk’t,’ she begged in a broken voice. ‘Oh, Urk’t! For the love of God, say you’re all right!’

  As Ernestine began to push the others away, Urquhart struggled free. ‘It’s not much,’ he said, shaking the blood from his eyes and trying to gather his senses.

  Marie-Claude seemed surprised but she was determined to have her moment, and, ignoring his protests, she wrenched dramatically at the skirt of the cotton dress she wore. He was still protesting as she brushed at the blood on his face with a torn-off piece of the material. ‘I thought you were dead, Urk’t,’ she was whispering. ‘I thought you were dead!’

  Urquhart sat up abruptly, taking her shoulders in his broad strong hands. ‘Stop it, Marie-Claude,’ he commanded. ‘Stop it! I’m not going to die, you little idiot!’

  She stared at him, her eyes agonized and still uncertain, and he grinned. ‘I’ll be here for years yet,’ he said. ‘And by the look of things, I’ll need to be, too, to get this place on its feet
again.’ And Neville knew then that, in his sturdy, self-reliant way, he had made up his mind long since about her.

  Marie-Claude was sitting back on her heels, staring at him, an expression of bewilderment on her face as though she couldn’t believe him. ‘You want to stay here?’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A man about the place.’

  She gazed at him a moment longer and Neville could see tears streaming down her cheeks, her expression a mixture of joy, wonder and guilt all mixed up together. ‘It isn’t a farm labourer I want, Urk’t,’ she said, her words coming in slow miserable steps. ‘I don’t care about that! I don’t care about the farm!’

  Urquhart grinned and, in the first real show of affection he’d made towards her since he’d arrived in Néry, he pulled her to him and kissed her properly on the lips. ‘I’m a farmer,’ he said. I do!’

  As she flung her arms round him, hugging him, her face deep in the angle of the neck, making little sobbing noises of happiness, Neville turned away. He suddenly knew what Urquhart had meant when he’d told him that he was too gentle for Marie-Claude. She needed strength, not to lean on, but to match her own strength, and he didn’t have to ask himself twice how Urquhart had managed to seize hold of her heart. He’d done no begging or pleading but had remained aloof, making Marie-Claude do the asking, sensing all along that she was suffering from an insecurity of which she was totally unaware that needed the example not of love but of determination. Remembering ruefully his concern when they’d first arrived that Urquhart might not find it easy to fit in, he realized Urquhart had fitted far better than he had himself, for the simple reason that he had sprung from a community identical with Néry, from a people with the same roots, even to the needs and the hopes and the ambitions.

  He drew a deep breath and began to walk towards the street. As he did so, he almost bumped into Madame Lamy. She managed a smile. ‘A new start,’ she said. ‘A new start for us all. C’est bon pour le courage?’